Our team drove down to UC Irvine to explore San Joaquin Marsh just off of central campus. As one of the last remaining wetlands in the county, this marsh is a hotspot for migratory waterfowl and seasonal vegetation. Current research by undergraduate and graduate students includes studying coyote movement in urban areas, herbivore predation effects on vegetation, and parasitoid population ecology. Just about all of the ponds and marshes were dried up, making it trickier to collect soil samples. On the way, we collected vegetation samples for UCI’s Botanical Conservatory for future researchers to have a catalog of plants on the reserve.
Peter Bowler, Reserve Co-Director, led us from site to site giving us vital information about how the marshes and vernal pools have been filling at different rates each year. We then took a short drive to collect samples at UCI’s Ecological Reserve where we examined revegetation plots of native plants including California buckwheat and coastal sage brush.
Photo credits: Peter Bowler (UCI), Miroslava Munguia (UCLA)